AUTHORS

Jonathan Walters -- Senior Editor. Jonathan has covered state and local government for more than 30 years, including for publications ranging from The Washington Post to USA Today. His beats include public sector management and administration, with an emphasis on results-based government. He also covers human services-related topics, and does a monthly e-newsletter on human services. He is author of three books, two on performance measurement in the public sector and one on public sector press relations. He started with GOVERNING in 1989 as a staff correspondent, and now serves as the magazine's executive editor. Walters lives in Columbia County, New York, where he serves as chairman of his local planning board. He is also a Class A interior attack qualified firefighter, and serves as president of his local volunteer fire company.

Britain has a bold yet simple plan to do something few U.S. governments do: test the effectiveness of multiple policies before rolling them out. But are American lawmakers willing to listen to facts more than money or politics?

The fatal explosion earlier this year at a Texas fertilizer plant that hadn’t been inspected since 1985 brought attention to the nation’s dysfunctional and ineffective system of keeping employees -- both in the public and private sectors -- safe.

A state-level movement has evolved to give terminally ill patients more say in what medicine and medical procedures they want during their final days. View our special series on aging in America at governing.com/generations.

One of the newest entrants in the CCT sweepstakes is the Family Independence Initiative (FII), which is currently operating in Oakland, Calif., San Francisco and Hawaii, and is starting a fourth pilot in Boston.

In 2002, North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services overhauled its policies and practices to find new ways of responding to child-neglect reports, and five years later, those changes appear to be paying off in Durham County.

To say that Christine Gregoire's start as governor of Washington was inauspicious would be an understatement. After an apparent 130-vote win in November 2004, the election was marred by multiple recounts and a lawsuit. When the Democratic majority in the legislature moved to certify her election, Republicans mustered on the front lawn of the statehouse chanting, "Revote! Revote!"

When it comes to governing in the United States, "there is more that unites us than divides us," declared Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, as he welcomed more than 350 high-level local and state officials to Governing's annual management conference, held in Baltimore October 10-12.